For an under 3 minute audio version click here
While levels of material prosperity are on the rise, so are levels of depression. One in six Australians aged 16-24 currently experiences an anxiety condition and the top issue of concern among Australians in this age group is coping with stress.
What is particularly shocking is that the percentage of Australian people experiencing depression in 1960 was 8% whereas in 2016 this has risen to 25%. Depression is killing almost double the amount of people as road accidents.
This leads us to a simple question with a complex answer: If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy?
This leads us to a simple question with a complex answer: If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy?
From a Jewish perspective, our happiness lies in something other than what we possess. We need to have proper thoughts and attitudes about the things we have. When we do, we will have paved another avenue leading to our happiness.
Deriving happiness from the things we have is complicated. The 11th century sage Rabbi Bachye Ibn Pakuda, in his Chochot Halevovot (Duties of the Heart), explains that humans enter this world surrounded by an abundance of favours. We breathe, walk, talk and have caring parents. This should make us all so happy and yet it does not. Even when our intelligence matures, we fail to focus on these gifts because we take them for granted.
Moreover, even things that at one point in life made us very happy,
eventually fail to do so. Its human nature to experience an emotional spike of joy when we get something new, but then the new becomes normal, and we don’t find happiness in normal. So we look for the new new. The cycle never ends.
When we are so focused on getting more, we lose the chance to focus on what we already have and gain happiness from it.
Wanting more and focusing on what we don’t have is not just a roadblock to happiness, it is also a bridge to and a cause for unhappiness. In this sense, it is a negative and harmful human trait.
In Summary:
a. We take so much of the good in life for granted because we always had it.
b. Even for the novel blessings, we adapt to them and they fail to cause us happiness.
c. We then focus on what we don’t have, which further exacerbates the problem by not allowing us to focus at all on what we do have.
d. Our desire for more generates negative emotion about our status.
Gratitude is an antidote to taking things for granted, and therefore a key to happiness.
Fortunately, Judaism has a built in system for gratitude. Catch me next week when we discuss Judaism’s unique approach to thankfulness and appreciation in our lives.